Monday, November 12, 2012

ka-BLAM!

No, Roseholme Cottage is not anywhere near the Richmond Hills subdivision. As a matter of fact, it is about fifteen miles away as the crow flies, assuming a reasonably sober crow.

Which makes the fact that I was standing on the porch late Saturday night and heard what sounded like a single rumble of thunder from the cloudless southern sky all the more impressive.

The Reynolds Wrap yarmulke crowd is already yelling "drone strike!" which I find surprising because I was unaware that they had MQ-1s carrying JDAMs now*. Don't get me wrong, a Hellfire will ruin your day, but it doesn't knock houses off their foundation three doors down, either.

While no official announcement has been made, I'm guessing a fuel-air, or "thermobaric", munition, and probably a big one; maybe 17,000-20,000 cubic feet of spark-detonated explosive gas/air mixture...

In other words, a gas leak in the unoccupied house. Given a modern, energy-efficient, darn-near-airtight house and a good leak at the water heater, it could get downright stoichiometric in there, given enough time to for the leak to hiss away before she blows.

(I'm surprised that gas explosions and fires haven't become even more common in post-foreclosure America, where metals-scavenging from unoccupied houses is a growth industry pursued by the none-too-bright with a shaky grasp of abstract concepts like workplace safety.)

*As it turns out, MQ-9s can indeed lug a couple 500-pounders into the air. Well paint me blue and call me Smurfette... Although I'm still missing a plausible reason for one to be dropped on an empty house in suburban Indianapolis. No doubt the internets will be glad to fill that little gap in for me.

Sure, the house that they dropped the tonnage on was vacant, but what if this was simply the Air Combat Command's version of a no-knock at the wrong address?

Within a day or two there will be some Lt. Colonel on the boob tube explaining that "Intelligence on the ground confirmed that this was the correct address. Unfortunately, due to the fog of war we blew our load on the wronge rooftop."

Sorry, all I saw was "reasonably sober crow" and immediately burst out laughing at the thought of an intoxicated crow seeking employment with the IMPD. Surely that fits in with drone strike theory somehow.

Natural gas explosion is a reasonable guess, especially with witness comments about first responders going to pull out survivors while still under the fireball. Natural gas is lighter than air, and such fireballs, when released by the house, will float up. Mabye not perfectly stoichiometric, then, though.

I told my daughters it was only what you could expect when they had a White Castle eat off followed by a chili cook off and the same guy won both. Several hours later while drinking PBR with his best friend in the garage his last words we're heard to be "Hey, watch me light this fart"

Youngest believed it, but her mother squelched it pretty quick. Same thing she did with Land Sharks and the people who live in traffic lights.

Your comment about Smurfette reminded me of a young woman I saw at CONstellation (1983 WorldCon in Baltimore) who was painted blue as (IIRC) an "alien slave girl". Sat next to me at a round-table discussion with Larry Niven, the downside of which is that I remember damn-all about what Niven said.

A number o f years back, I was heading out to the car and the ground kind of surged; thought I heard a boom or rumble, and figured that since I didn't see any debris or smoke, it was probably someone's basement meth lab.

Couple days later, I find out it was an earthquake...

"Meth lab" is always a suspicion here - when you have folks going to the county luckup for visits - and driving their mobile cookery.

Here in Minnesnowta it's code to have the last 5 feet or so of the gas line (usually from a carbon-steel pipe) run to the stove. It has to be a newfangled corrugated cupro-nickel thingy, which takes the place of what used to be just a coiled-up roll of copper line (I guess they had too many breakages of those).

As I noted over in Roberta's comments, it's been fairly common for somebody to steal that line, and fail to crimp the end (or shut off the valve) and deliberately light up the house to cover their tracks.

Buddy of mine went to check on a neighbor lady who complained her furnace was on the fritz. He went in through the outside basement door just when she turned on the basement light. Next thing he knew he was in the next door yard, trying to put his hair out. Blew the house off the foundation. Neighbor lady needed clean shorts but was otherwise unhurt.

Why do you assume a drone? F-16s and F/A-18s carry JDAMs. Maybe DoD is trying to get ahead of sequestration by unloading some assets to local law enforcement.

A guy on the ridge I live had a huge burn pile, which he doused with gasoline. Then he found he didn't have a lighter, went into the house to look for one. Eventually he came back out, after the gasoline had been merrily evaporating, lit off the - BOOOOM!

Rattled windows all over the ridge. He survived and didn't even look much like Wile E. Coyote. To this day people still talk about the time (Redacted) set off his fuel-air bomb.

My father tells a story from his childhood in the 1920's of an elderly woman with excessive facial hair who sometimes watched him and his siblings when both of his parents needed to be elsewhere. One evening the gas stove malfunctioned. When she went to prepare dinner for them and lit the stove with a match, there was a small explosion. When we asked him if she was alright after the explosion, his response was "Alright? Best she looked in years!"

On a serious note, about a mile from where I grew up, a two story house blew up from a gas explosion. The blast completely demolished the house from the concrete foundation upward severely damaged the adjacent houses. No one was home at the house at the time of the explosion but the neighbors were home. Seeing the small size of the pieces of debris and the large radius of the debris field was disturbing to me.

TORRANCE, Calif. (AP) - A total of 115 homes and apartments weredamaged when a home tented for termite fumigation filled withnatural gas exploded, showering the neighborhood with debris, fireofficials said.Damage from the blast early Tuesday ranged from broken windowsto collapsed ceilings, said Tad Friedman, a spokesman for theTorrance Fire Department. The cost of the damage had not beendetermined.Despite the force of the explosion, only 10 people had minorinjuries."I felt the blast at my home two miles away," Friedman said."I knew it would be miraculous if there were no fatalities."A witness told fire investigators on Wednesday that the blastsent a bright orange, mushroom-shaped fireball into the sky and wasfollowed by several more explosive flashes with a greenish tint.Debris was found as far as 100 yards away.The City Council declare a state of emergency for the beachsidecommunity and set aside $85,000 for cleanup. Torrance is about 20miles south of Los Angeles.One of the damaged homes belonged to John Williams, who watchedWednesday as a steady stream of engineers, utility workers andinsurance adjusters made their way through his home across thestreet from the scene of the explosion.The blast shattered many of the windows in the home Williamsshares with his wife and two adult sons. It also blew off the frontdoor and brought the ceiling of one bedroom crashing down."We've all been outside today wandering up and down the road,"he said. "It's amazing the way people are taking it. It's like,OK, we had a problem, let's go fix it. We're all lucky that nobodywas really seriously hurt."An initial inspection indicated that Williams' home had noserious structural damage. However, it will be several days beforehis family can move back in because the utilities were knocked outand must be repaired.Along with many of his neighbors, Williams and his family arestaying at a local motel.Meanwhile, investigators with the Fire Department and The GasCo. sought to determine how the home filled with gas. An officialwith The Gas Co. said it appeared there was a crack in a pipe thatfed natural gas into the home. But it was unclear how or when thecrack occurred."We were at the home two days prior and there was no evidenceof a crack or any indication to the meter reader that there was aproblem," said Peter Hidalgo, a spokesman for The Gas Co.Friedman said the gas may have been ignited by fans used duringthe fumigation or by other electrical devices. The chemical usedfor the fumigation was sulfuryl fluoride, which is commonly knownas Vikane and is not flammable, he said.A total of 33 homes were damaged in Torrance, including the onethat was destroyed. Another 82 homes and apartments were damaged innearby Redondo Beach.The owners of the home where the blast occurred, identifiedthrough property records as Robert and Helen Mimura, were not thereat the time and could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.The home was being fumigated by El Redondo Termite Control ofGardena. Leo Grizzaffi, an attorney for El Redondo, has saidcompany officials were trying to determine what had happened.He said the work at the home was being done by a subcontractor,Network Fumigation and Exterminating Co. Inc. of Anaheim. A callplaced to Network was answered by someone who said the firm had nocomment.

Lonnnggg time ago (think Nixon), I had an after work gig helping shovel snow off vacation home roofs at Tahoe. Heavy winter for lake level Tahoe, 5-6' of wet heavy snow on the roofs. One evening we're going at it, there was a huge "WHUMPFF" and the roof just sort of fell out from under us. The walls had blown outward, the roof fell and the pink blown in fiberglass insulation drifted down for what seemed hours. Luckily the snow dampened the upward effect of explosion and our fall,and no one was hurt. We quite literally walked off the roof onto the ground. Homes in the area at that time, were heated either by oil or propane in above ground tanks and with some exposed exterior plumbing. Propane is heavier than air and "puddles in low areas.If you have a small outside leak it usually doesn't matter too much because it normally dissipates in the open air. In this case the snow acted like a lid and it flowed through the pipe penetration into the crawl space under the home. It built up until it hit an ignition source & lit off. A bunch of houses blew up that year and the building code was changed to require the house connection to have a snow load proof cover over it.

We had a fire department here in Parker's Prairie MN that did that once. Poor fireman flipped a light switch and was left standing in a pile of rubble where the station used to be! Blew the brick structure clean to steel girders and it's foundation.

Residents of one of the posher neighborhoods in Williamsburg used (in the 90's, anyway -- no idea these days) complain about the reular (mostly weekends) explosions coming from the direction of the nearby "naval base" (Camp Peary)*. Always got told, "Exploding transformers. Really."

I mind the time a near neighbor got blown out of his apartment by a gas explosion, and the guy from Atlanta Gas Light said that the fella was lucky it was a rich explosion; he got kinda scorched, but was otherwise just slightly bruised.